Web 2.0 Mash-ups and the New Aggregators

Aggregators As the New Blog Portals

I believe we are in an era that resembles late 1997. At that time I was two years into a project that attempted to collect together statements and publications from a number of U.S.-based peace groups. The site was arranged logically enough but the mass of knowledge was more than the casual visitor could take in. I also felt that quality of material varied greatly and I wanted a way to highlight exceptional pieces.

So I started a page listing my favorite links and I updated it every week. Looking back I later realized I had started a blog. Many of us were looking for a way to organize and personalize the information that was accumulating on the Web; the term “weblog” was coined in December 1997 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog). Like other early bloggers my site was hand-coded and manually updated every week.

It was almost two more years before Blogger was launched and blogging could become mainstream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger_%28service%29). The automated blogging platforms have separated content creation from technical know-how.